RESPONSES
Clark, Joseph
I n political action a liberal such as Jim Loeb will usually find more common ground than disagreement with many of us who consider ourselves democratic socialists. To cite a recent...
...Emphasis on the jobcreating aspects of economic-stimulus legislation demanded by the labor movement should get more decisive general support...
...This American socialist was mainly concerned about how this would take place in America, not just in Italy, and he wanted to learn from the freewheeling Italian Communists how America would make the transition...
...Nevertheless, it is of some significance that members of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee have achieved a kind of citizenship within the Democratic party and in various unions and liberal organizations...
...That from feudalism to capitalism "was a centuries-long process of anomalies and contradictions," Harrington writes...
...The last time Loeb, Mike Harrington, and I voted and worked for the same candidate for president...
...The discussion in the book suffered from the same fault, in my opinion, that has plagued all such discussions...
...The Italian Communists— now busy, among other things, with supporting a Christian Democratic government to enable that government to remain in power, so that eventually the Communists might share power with them— were amazed by this American socialist...
...The last thing they wanted to do was put the issue of Italy's transition to socialism to the fore...
...Why is there no socialism in Sweden, governed for 40 years by a socialist party...
...It has been suggested that Jim Loeb is asking us to admit that we are really liberal democrats...
...I understand only too well the pessimism of Reinhold Niebuhr about the advantages that the children of darkness enjoy, given the nature of man...
...Why is there no socialism in Germany, the homeland of Marx and Engels and a country governed by a socialist party...
...I strongly endorse the comments of Norway's Erik Brofoss, quoted by Loeb, that, "For us it [socialism] means the extension of democracy to economic life...
...Why is there no socialism in England (where Marx toiled for so many years in the British Museum), ruled many times (and now) by a socialist party...
...And if anyone wants a real paradox, there is only one place in all the world where a small but vital part of the social-economic fabric is actually socialist—on the kibbutz in Israel...
...But there is a sunnier side to that nature, evident at least in various calamities and crises...
...The foolishness of some ruminations about the transition to socialism was underscored by a recent visit of a militant and nostalgic socialist to Italy, to interview Italian Communists about their concepts 91 concerning the transition to socialism...
...Well, I, for one, do seek more common ground between liberals and socialists...
...So Jim Loeb is right, I think, when he asks us to see that the old definitions of socialism are obsolete...
...To cite a recent example, Loeb took the initiative in organizing support for Iberian democracy, including aid for those seeking to eradicate the remains of Francoism in Spain as well as support for the democratic socialists headed by Mario Soares in Portugal...
...Those of Lenin and Trotsky, some 70 years later, were even less prescient...
...The Italian Communists are even reluctant to enter into a discussion with their Spanish Communist comrades as to whether the totalitarian regime of Russia and the other East European regimes are socialist...
...It asks the wrong question...
...Or, why no socialism in the most advanced capitalist country of the world...
...Jim Loeb brings up another important matter when he notes that the socialist label is an asset in many other countries, but not in the U.S...
...Because I refuse to accept the idea that cupidity, 92 selfishness, and greed are proper incentives to enable an economic system to function...
...Surely, in the immediate sense, in our own country, this means that the mandate of the last election must be carried out...
...Perhaps then the I and the We can find better levels of coexistence...
...If so, and there are such trends, there may be hope for true equality and social justice, albeit in a more distant future than we anticipated in our youth...
...Beyond that they wondered about this American socialist, who had all of a few hundred comrades associated with his version of a socialist "movement," but who didn't have more important things to concern himself with than the transition to socialism in America...
...Failure of a Dream...
...was the title of a recent book containing essays seeking "to examine the reasons for the relative weakness of American socialism...
...and Harrington cautions us about the hazards of assigning a time frame for the transition of one system into another...
...certainly the West European socialists act on the premise that the socialism of the Communist Man/esto hardly pertains to the politics and the future development of their countries...
...But now Loeb challenges us to describe how we differ from liberals such as he...
...And sometimes when they do get down to the matter of socialism, including the common ownership of the means of production and how that will be attained anywhere in the world, let alone in our own country, there is either a vagueness or a lack of reality in their approach, Michael Harrington reminds us in his seminal work The Twilight of Capitalism that socialists should avoid giving the impression that their methods, "even" Marxism, give them a privileged insight into the future...
...BACK TO THE QUESTION, why am I a socialist...
...The insights of Marx into the future in 1848 were unfortunate, as were his predictions of 1850...
...The question usually asked is, why the weakness of a socialist movement in America...
...The labor movement has been and remains the most essential ingredient of a coalition aiming at these goals...
...But since most democratic socialists would agree that socialism is not on the order of the day and that measures short of socialism are urgently required to cope with the energy crisis—with the decline and decay of many of our cities, with racial and sex discrimination, and other pressing issues—the bigger need is for a stronger, more effective, better led, more encompassing movement for extending democracy to economic life...
...Furthermore, it seems to me that socialists often do not address themselves with candor to the issue of socialism...
...Now then, if we are talking about something that will happen a century or so from now, the importance of what we do in the next hundred years is as important, I hope, as theoretical ruminations about the transition to socialism...
...The clear implication is that the same goes for the transition from capitalism to socialism...
...In my rejection of the incentives that oil the economic system of capitalism, I bow as sorrowfully as Niebuhr, with the knowledge that such incentives have been motivating forces of economic development throughout recorded history...
...Individual advantage and incentive have at times become intertwined with social organization and democratic planning and regulation...
...While adhering to realistic and rational modes of social and political behavior, I retain a vision of social justice as old as the Hebrew prophets and as recent as the letters and speeches of Sacco and Vanzetti that clinched my adherence to this dream 50 years ago...
...Socialists can be active in the coalitions and movements for greater economic and social democracy, but the socialist label will not be of any advantage...
...Furthermore, the Italian Communists are concerned lest their constituents retain an image of socialism contaminated by comparisons with the police states of Eastern Europe...
...the Spanish Communists don't think the Soviet Union is socialist...
...Nevertheless, in our epoch we've come up with modes of thought and social systems that meliorate and amend the rank evil that is seemingly required to make economic systems work...
...But I wart to go beyond the welfare state to the kind of liberal-welfare reforms that will establish democratic controls in a society that has been and is marked by the dominating influence of the corporations...
...But the real question is, why is there no socialism—as a social system—in any country of the world...
...It does not mean nationalization, but rather that those economic decisions that affect the life of an entire nation must be made democratically...
...The question is often asked in discussions about socialism, why is America so far behind many of the countries of Western Europe in this respect...
...I hasten to assure him that at least one democratic socialist agrees that "every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programs...
...We have seen mixed economies in various countries where decided advantages were obtained through democratic regulation of enterprise, through social legislation affecting employment, health care and the quality of life, and even the use of just taxation, as well as countervailing power of labor and liberal movements, to secure some measure of redistribution of wealth and more equal opportunity...
...The excessive moderation in moving toward reducing the scandalously high unemployment in this country is hardly the mandate of '76...
Vol. 25 • January 1978 • No. 1
